


At Death's Door

by SunlightOnTheWater



Series: Pathways [14]
Category: Riddick (2013), Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, POV Ellen Harvelle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:53:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlightOnTheWater/pseuds/SunlightOnTheWater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Winchester was supposed to be dead, not wandering around with the most feared army in the known universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Death's Door

_Someone put in an emergency call when she and Jo were still in cryosleep, signalling the beginning of a nightmare._

* * *

Ellen stepped out of _The Roadhouse_ and breathed out a soft sight, muscles relaxing. Advances in artificial gravity meant that space time wasn't as bad as it had been when she'd first started making scrap expeditions, back before she'd married Bill, but nothing could replace real gravity on a planet. Helion Five was bustling and warm, a variety of languages reaching her ears as Jo bounded down the ramp to join her. "I took inventory," her daughter said, waving a digital clipboard at Ellen. "It's all ready to be listed for sale."

"Nice work," Ellen told her, ruffling long blonde hair. The action made Jo scowl and struggle to straighten her long locks, motions becoming frantic when she noticed who was waiting for them just outside the docking area. Her daughter had been nursing a crush on Dean Winchester for the past year, which was something that was mildly concerning to her mother. While the Winchester boy wasn't the worst person for her daughter to be crushing on, his chosen occupation wasn't something that she wanted Jo involved in. Hunters had notoriously short lifespans, which had only gotten shorter as public knowledge of the universe expanded, and the last thing she wanted was for her daughter to have to bury a loved one who'd died early, liked she'd had to do for Bill.

Bobby Singer was standing next to the Winchester boy, scruffy baseball cap firmly in place. Ellen smiled at him as Jo rushed forward so she could chatter a mile a minute to Dean, swinging her bag up on her shoulder. "Welcome back, Ellen," Bobby said, pulling her into a brief, one armed hug.

"It's good to be back," Ellen told him, hugging back lightly and then falling in step beside him as he headed towards the marketplace. She could hear Dean and Jo behind him, both of them laughing over the Winchester boy's latest case. From the sounds of it, his chase after an unquiet spirit had been a wild goose chase across a planet that was mostly swampland, and the sounds of her daughter's delight made Ellen smile. "It was a strange trip," she admitted to Bobby in a low tone, thinking about the dark haired boy with sad eyes that had claimed to be Sam Winchester.

Five years ago, Ellen Harvelle had been in deep space with an eight year old Jo when Rufus Turner had put in an emergency call to _The Roadhouse_. The ship was programmed to put any emergency calls through to the captain, regardless of cryosleep. When Bill had still been alive, that had been him, but by this time the call when through to Ellen, waking and ejecting her from the cryo chamber. She'd stumbled her way towards the cockpit of the ship, still trying to shake off the muzziness of sleep, and answered only to be confronted by horrifying news. A demon had attacked the Winchesters. Dean had been the only survivor. The boy behind her, listening attentively as Jo chattered on about some of the electronics they'd salvaged, was surprisingly well adjusted considering what he'd been put through.

"What happened?" Bobby asked and Ellen let out a bark of laughter that had Jo sending her a concerned look.

"I need a drink to get into that," she told her old friend.

Bobby considered her seriously before saying, "I think that can be arranged."

* * *

_"Rufus? What is it?" Ellen asked, lifting a hand to rub sleep from her eyes as she studied his image on the screen. He looked tired and worn thin, neither of which proceeded good news. Not that an emergency call was every good news._

* * *

Bobby Singer lived in a bungalow in the middle of a junkyard. The place looked like a mess, inside and out, but the man knew where everything was. For that reason alone, poorer people who owned shuttles or spaceships came to Singer Salvage to get the part they needed. Bobby left the old fashioned sign flipped to closed as when he unlocked the gate and ushered them inside, pulling it shut and activating the defenses behind them. "You two, go set up some targets out back," Bobby told the kids.

"Yeah," Dean said, nudging his shoulder against Jo's with a playful grin. "Jo could use the practice."

" _Hey!_ " Ellen's daughter squawked, shoving Dean back hard enough to make him stumble.

"You both could use the practice," Bobby said, waving his baseball cap at them to get them moving. The two scrambled towards Bobby's backyard, Jo's gold hair flying out behind her as she jogged after Dean. Ellen smiled and shook her head at their antics before following Bobby inside the house.

The man led the way to the kitchen, pulling out a glass bottle with amber colored bourbon in it. Her poured two shots, passing one over to Ellen before taking the other one. The two settled at his cluttered kitchen table, sweeping aside books and notes so they had a place to settle their arms. Ellen swallowed the bourbon in one gulp and set the glass on the table with a hollow sounding thunk. "What happened?" Bobby asked again and Ellen gestured for him to pour her another glass, staring at the sunlight filtering through one of his grimy windows while she waited.

She downed the second glass in the same manner as the first, but rolled it between her hands instead of placing it down on the table. "There was a kid on the ship that Jo and I salvaged," she told him, staring at a point past his shoulder. "Everyone else on the ship had been slaughtered, but Jo found the kid curled up and crying in one of the holding cells."

"Lone survivors ain't that uncommon," Bobby told her but Ellen shook her head to shush him.

"Kid had black eyes," Ellen told him and Bobby stiffened. "He didn't hurt Jo though. Just told her to leave before she got hurt like everyone always did around him."

"It could have been a trap."

"You think I don't know that," Ellen snapped. "There's devil's traps at all the entrances to _The Roadhouse_ and not one of them caught him or broke around him. I gave him holy water to drink later, but it didn't hurt him, so either he's an exceptionally powerful demon or he's something entirely different."

"What'd you do with him?" Bobby asked, pouring himself another drink and downing it.

"He gave us coordinates to a ship where his...family was supposed to be. We told him we'd drop him off there." Ellen resisted the urge the grab the bottle and pour herself another drink. The alcohol wouldn't help her handle the whole affair any better. "It was a Necromonger ship."

There was a moment of silence as Bobby absorbed that information. Then he said, "I didn't think their eyes turned black."

"According to rumor, they don't, but I haven't met anyone from Helion Prime who is willing to talk about the invasion," Ellen told him, leaning her elbows against the table. "But the boy living on the Necromonger ship wasn't the strangest part of the whole affair. It was what he said his name was." She glanced down at her hands, breathing out a tired sigh before looking up to meet Bobby's eyes. "He said he was Sam Winchester."

* * *

_"You need to get back home Ellen," Rufus told her, voice rough. "We've got trouble."_

* * *

Bobby stood abruptly, chair squealing on the floor. "That's impossible," he told her in a dark voice. "Sam Winchester's dead."

"Is he really?" Ellen challenged, not bothering to rise. "They never found the a body."

"Demons killed the Winchesters, Ellen. They wouldn't have left a little boy alive for any reason."

"John was after a demon that had done something to Sam," Ellen protested before sighing and running her hands through her hair. "Maybe the demon came back to collect its little experiment. I don't know."

"Okay," Bobby said after a moment of consideration, sitting back down. "Should we tell Dean?"

"I don't think so," Ellen replied. "I told Jo not to mention anything to him because we didn't know for sure. We don't want to get the boy's hopes up only to find out that it was a lie, or a different Sam Winchester. I want you to do what investigating you can and I'll do some looking on my end. Hopefully one of us will come up with concrete information one way or another."

"Alright," Bobby told her with a heavy sigh. "I'll see what the mercs that come into the salvage yard known about the Necromonger chain of commander and a boy named Sam Winchester. You asked around the salvage crews. We'll compare notes afterwards and decide whether or not to tell Dean."

"Tell me what?" a voice asked from the doorway and Ellen turned to see Dean holding the door open for Jo to bounce through.

"Ellen ran into some possible information about what happened five years ago," Bobby informed Dean gruffly. "We're gonna do some digging and see if the source was telling the truth."

"We'll let you know once we have all the information, honey," Ellen added gently and Dean nodded, some of the light leaving his eyes.

It hurt, seeing that Dean was still haunted by that night. Ellen knew firsthand that having someone you cared about murdered by a creature that most people believed didn't exist. Having to see the people you cared about tortured to death in front of you would be worse. Ellen wished that she could take the memories and suffering from Dean, but she didn't have that ability. All she could do was try to give him some closure, and maybe this lead on Sam would do that. She glanced over at Bobby and he nodded once. They would get the truth in any way they could if it would help wipe the haunted look out of Dean's eyes.


End file.
